Coronavirus

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™ Go Premium A legal eagle with a functioning risk taxonomy yesterday Index — Click the ᐅ to expand: Glossary Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

The moment when that carefully crafted risk taxonomy falls apart before your very eyes. For is the bigger issue here the sickness of crowds, or their madness?

For where in it, pray tell, does it cover the risks of flu epidemics, let alone the second order calamities associated with people irrationally panicking about them:

• The secondary epidemic of dissentry because neurotic stockpilers in north London have cleaned the entire southeast out of lavatory paper and soap?
• The sudden bankruptcy of the nation’s entire Italian restaurant sector, and consequent disruption to dependent industries, because (a) they’re Italian and omg coronavirus!!! (b) the restaurant and kitchen staff all insist on working from home and (c) the restaurants can’t get hold of any linguini anyway because neurotic stockpilers in north London have cleaned the entire southeast out of pasta?
• Homicidal fights breaking at the firm’s business continuity management site in Scunthorpe, which has just nine parking spaces (all occupied by premises management staff), one diminutive kebab joint within six miles (which is in imminent risk of shut down owing to non COVID-19 food standards breaches), it not having occurred to anyone that in an actual disaster, four thousand people would turn up and want lunch at once.
• The fact that the only way to the BCM site is therefore on public transport and omg coronavirus!!!